Platelets, a type of blood cell that’s vital to clotting, can help stem the bleeding for trauma victims and even wounded soldiers on the battlefield. And one Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company is working to make it easier to get the cells out to the front lines.

Platelet BioGenesis showed Thursday that it’s able to create 100 million platelets with one run of its bioreactor — a big step forward after 20 years of research and investments from funders as varied as the Department of Defense and an undergraduate investment club. Its founders presented the results in a poster at a Gordon Research Conference in Galveston, Texas.

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